Whether you’re an army brat or an expat kid, “home” is often more a concept than an actual location for Third Culture Kids (TCK). Kids like us have learned how to adapt to new cities, countries, and cultures so well that most have found a way to balance belonging to both everywhere and nowhere. But being from both everywhere and nowhere also means that it’s difficult for us to make a deal with Cupid.
We joke and grimace about the struggle of explaining exactly where we’re from to new people. We’ve each memorized our succinct autobiographical sentence of where our parents are originally from and all of the places that we’ve grown up because there really is no other way to explain it. People hear us and seem to come to one of these two conclusions: that we’re showing off all of the places that we’ve been or that we’re really exotic, like modern day nomads.
Some envy us and see it as a glamorous life, filled with frequent flyer miles and multiple countries’ SIM cards. Others listen and get completely confused, so they try to over-simplify, “So you’re from Dubai because you were born there.” The answer, “No, my parents were just transferred there temporarily,” only further baffles them, especially when the person in question has a red solo cup in hand at a crowded frat party or is trying to get to know you in an equally loud nightclub.
What people don’t see is the mess that being a Third Culture Kid can make out of your love life. We often get labeled as "commitment phobic" from our well-meaning dinner table psychologist friends and frustrated borderline significant others because we don’t know when or where to allow ourselves to begin that relationship. What’s the point of falling in love with someone when you don’t know which country–let alone which city–you will be in in a year from now? Future plans become a lot less romantic the second that you bring in visa issues and your family’s next transfer to destination TBA. A lifestyle of travel has made you restless and being in just one place feels strange, no matter how many times you may try and convince yourself that this sort of stability is “normal” to most people. Your wanderlust is as much a part of you as the melting-pot accent that you’ve got thanks to years of international teachers, friends, and words that you picked up from the languages of the other countries that you’ve lived in. It’s difficult for those who aren’t TCK to understand that your accent changes depending on who you’re talking to and that no, you’re not putting on a fake accent.
My friend Jacqueline once expressed this phenomenon really well when she told me, “You need a relationship that fits in a suitcase.” Seeing as airlines seem to decrease the baggage allowance every year, I strongly doubt my ability to stow away an entire figurative significant other on board along with all my clothes and shoes. But, all these stereotypes of Third Culture Kids aside, I remain a believer in Cupid’s ability to make it through all the time zones, transfers, and accents. What people fail to realize is that behind the– albeit sometimes true– commitment phobic stereotype, Third Culture Kids build their notion of “home” around the people and relationships in their lives. On our high school senior retreat, just before my family was about to get transferred and I was about to leave all my friends for college, my friend Oliver provided an insight that I’ve never been able to forget: “You’ll always be home, in a way. You take so many pictures because those memories with those people are your sense of home.” He was right. As a TCK, my friendships have been my anchor. The depth and stability of the love in those relationships are what home is to me and many other expat kids and army brats.
It’s with these thoughts that I remain confident that I’m going to find that bad*ss Prince Charming/Chuck Bass/Ranbir Kapoor soulmate who’s someday going to be waiting right next to me, his own suitcase and passport in hand, ready to keep on traveling the world with a check-in for two.
